Borderlines of Insanity
by lonesomeskies
Summary: No one hired him, and he's no one. His only aim is to find truth among the ashes. And he figures that killing the Lone Wanderer is the very thing that will make his life more bearable than it actually is.


'To meet the Lone Wanderer one needs excuses', she says, glancing sideways as if the Loner could actually hear her speaking. 'And good ones to that', she says. There is so much uncertainty in her eyes that I ask myself how, why. Why so much fear, why so many had to die to scare us. 'If you try to find him, you won't unless he finds you first.'

'I plan on killing the bitch', I say. I see her roll her eyes and then roll them some more.

'You must be crazy, boy', she says. But she sighs. There is something she understands about me. I hear her say, 'But you're quite right. One needs to be crazy. We were born cursed with this damn desert, and if you ain't crazy enough, or bad enough, you can hang yourself as well on the nearest tree.' She spits and takes out a packet of pre-war cigarettes. 'One needs to slow down a bit.' She lights herself one and says, 'Get mad a bit.'

I reach for one too, thinking maybe she's right, but hoping she ain't. I say to myself, I am sane, I am sane.

'I am sane', I say aloud. Jen bursts out laughing.

'I see', she says. 'I see it, I do.'

…...

I ask him gently, almost politely, to put off please that dirty little mask of his, as there ain't no nerve gas or whatever he suspects there is around. The Loner glares at me, unflinching, a flicker of madness in his pitch black eyes. He asks me again, who. His voice sends nasty shivers down my spine and I'm electrified; or I should rather say paralysed. I fight to look convincing, and I manage a faint smile while squeezing those scissors tight under the table. Right then he pierces me with that goddamn dirty stare of his behind that mask and.

'Don't', he says. I'd rather. In your place. 'Don't', and it's the only word he actually says but still it rings in my ears with incomparable force. My hand goes numb as I sense him tighten his fingers on the trigger. I'm driven to the edge and inches from resorting to pleading with the sick desert man.

'I'd suggest you put that hand on the table. _Now'_, he says, disturbing me in my dreaming. I look up, startled and quite aghast. 'Now', I repeat, out of my mind. His voice is what disturbs me most: it's so composed that almost impersonal, and that's what makes it so threatening. I gaze deep into his eyes that are hidden behind the mask. Then, I slowly retrieve my hands from under the table and place them on it, painfully conscious of the Wander's presence there in front of me.

'Who hired you', he asks once more. 'I'm asking you for the last time.'

I try to look back on the past few months of my life: a brief and unsatisfactory romance with Ellen, becoming a raider, changing sides and becoming an anti-raider, becoming a slaver, being caught and enslaved, I try hard to establish those facts in chronological order but somehow can't, and lost in my own thoughts I forget he's there waiting. Who hired me, really? I did. I wanted to change things, no matter how, for better or for worse that was irrelevant. I wanted to break free from what I've known. And catch 'im.

'No one', I say and meet his gaze. There's no defiance in me but no fear either. 'I found my existence meaningless somehow. That's all. They speak of you as a legend down there. I wanted to see with my own eyes that legend.' And as I cease to talk I let out a quiet sigh. He's still there, undisturbed, and I realize the gun's still trained on me too.

'You were ready to die for it?', he asks, his voice devoid of emotion. 'I never meant trouble', I say. 'Not with you at the least. I was a nobody, now, what's of human life itself? It's like I'm here for a while, imagining myself to be breathing, to be a being, a something, forgetting it's without any meaning really. I fear for my life every day, but what's life? It lasts as short as a blinking. And I doubt that too because how do we know it's true that we're here, isn't it that we make it up everyday for some reason? Isn't it we run about with our pettiness to forget it's pettiness and no more? It's like the desert taught me a lesson I did not comprehend. I hoped you would explain. I don't know why – for some drunken reason I think', I stop and lower my eyes. 'Yes, I'm an ex-raider. And I can't bear my life no more.'

I stand up, disregarding him now completely. Passion is burning in me like fire, piercing through my very heart. 'I wanted to be a person, a human being!', I scream, like I was being torn to pieces. 'I believe in nothing! And how? Do tell me: how is it possible?' I quiet down, panting. He stares on. He doesn't even move once. I go on, quietly, and it is pain I experience when I speak on.

'I don't believe in the sand under my feet, in the sun that burns my skin. I can't believe in the water I drink each day. When I last shot someone I shot a figure of a ghost, if not something less than that. I made love to a ghost. And then there was no love, no feeling. Scraps of a tattered sheets and my head aching.' He rises too and makes a move with his hand to unfix the headgear. I see he's holstered the gun and then I see his face for the first time. The Lone Wanderer is a man of about thirty, earnest, watchful and scary. He looks me in the eye and I wonder if he wants to find the truth behind my impassioned confession. And I wonder too if he's ever asked himself the questions I've been asking myself for the last couple of years, if only.

'I can't think of a way to help you', he says, killing the silence with his impassive monotone. I don't evade his stare for a second; we stand reading each other like we were two mysteries. I see plainly he can't recognize anything familiar in me. I am a riddle, like he's been a riddle to me.

'You've been looking for me for eight months', he says. His voice sounds a bit more humane, but maybe it only seems so. I nod for I don't know how to tell him I've spent so much time plotting and stalking him and risking my life only to kill him. There is nothing I can do about it; I want him dead, so much dead. I look at him and wonder if he knows. I look at him and wonder if my eyes betray me. If he reads me as easily as they say he reads people.

'You don't even have a gun, do you', he asks and I think, apparently he doesn't. I tell him some ghouls or other took it from me. 'Why did you get so desperate?', he asks. Oh, I am desperate. 'So reckless and stupid, for what?' For what, really?

'Take me with you', I say, temporizing. And this is where it begins: I hear noises from the outside, and then two wild mutants appear, their sharp teeth glinting in the darkness. The Loner grabs his rifle and hands me another one.

'We've got a problem here', he says and I smile one of my particular smiles: the one of covert triumph. Live with your illusion, you damn fool, I think as I fire and one of the mutants falls dead.


End file.
